A squawk of unintelligible radio fuzz mercifully rouses me from another jail nightmare. The sun is up. Dust motes dancing in its first rays strike the eastern salon window. Supine, I mop the night-sweats off my forehead and breastbone, coming to consciousness with the admission that today I must figure out where I am going. Instinctively, and rather stupidly, I have continued along the known path of America’s Great Circle Loop, where Derek and I were headed before I ran away. He can easily catch up with me if he figures out what I’ve done.
Does Derek miss me? Is he worried? God, I am so perverse. On this wild escapade designed to put as much distance as possible between us, I feel ambivalent about causing him any pain. I just want him to leave me alone. The love-you-hate-you is probably just another manifestation of menopause. It reminds me of when Richard Nixon died and fond memories arose — “I am not a crook” and all that — or more currently of the deifying of Ronald Reagan who in death achieved the sainthood he never earned as president.
The women generations ahead of me exhibited some pretty bizarre behavior when they were going through “the change” but I am sure this takes the cake. Derek calls it “mental pause” due to my “whore moans.” Perhaps he’s right and I need my head examined.
I roll off the couch, splash my face with a few pumps of tap water, wiping the sleep crust my mother calls “fish eggs” from the inner corners of my eyes. She’s really going to get a kick out of this. She’s never liked Derek, proclaiming him “not worth two shits” and she likes me so much that anything I do is AOK with her. Considering the great mother I have, I should have turned out a lot better. Maybe when the menopause is over I can obtain a doctorate, a Cabinet post or earn a Nobel, something to show her that all her aspirations for me were not in vain.
Up to this point, America’s Great Loop is one of my more impressive accomplishments.
The Loop encompasses roughly 6,000 miles of Great Lakes, Atlantic Ocean, Gulf of Mexico and sundry notable rivers and canals in eastern North America. The total mileage of the so-called “Loop” depends on where you begin, in my case Lake Superior. From there, Derek and I sailed Chinook across Lake Superior from west to east through the Straits of Mackinac that divide Michigan into upper and lower peninsulas. We proceeded south down Lake Michigan’s Michigan side around the Indiana bend — the shortest distance across the lake-and along the southeast Illinois border into the rivers that are accessible from the Chicago area. It is 1,300 miles from Chicago to Mobile, Alabama. From there the entire world is accessible, via the Gulf of Mexico. Not a bad destination. The world.
The first of the Heartland Rivers is the Illinois, followed by 218 miles of the Mississippi with its hairpin turns, swirling currents, mud flats and massive commercial barges steaming ’round the bends. A sharp left at the Ohio River junction brings the current strong against upbound boats. Two locks later it’s on to the narrow, twisting, ever-green Cumberland River, leading into the locks at Land Between the Lakes, portal to the poetic Tennessee River. The Tennessee merges into the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway. Known as the Tenn-Tom, it’s a system of natural and man-made water bodies controlled by a dozen locks dropping to sea level at Mobile Bay, land of salt water and tidal influence. From there Loopers hang a left toward Florida, tracing the panhandle and west coast down to the Keys before heading up the Eastern Seaboard and into the Great Lakes.
Derek will definitely resent the interruption in his plans; resent having to look for me. He hates waiting for me for even a second as I hurry along, trying to keep up but forever behind his double-time pace down the aisles. So many places I would have tarried when he rushed along to something he was interested in. But I know better. In Hammond just a few days ago he’d waited outside with a backpack of groceries while I went in the discount liquor outlet to get something non-alcoholic. It was hard to not drink; Derek continued to enjoy cocktail hour every night along with any other boaters we met. I hated to ask him to stop. And for money. But he was almost cheerful.
“Might as well make it worth it. Get some Blue while you’re in there.” He handed me a $20. Diet tonic water was speedily located. But despite its prodigious stocks the store did not carry his favorite Labatt Blue. I desperately scanned the coolers, unable to decide on an alternative. Budweiser, Corona, El Presidente, Anchor Steam? He doesn’t like light beer, says my favorite Miller Lite tastes like water. Should I choose dark beer, amber bock, wheat ale? Ten minutes passed before I grabbed two 12-packs of Bud and checked out, the line slowed by an array of ghetto-fabulous characters mulling over Lotto numbers. When I emerged Derek had already started back to the boat. I could see him striding angrily, a pissed-off speed walker, two bags of groceries swinging in his hands, backpack loaded with more provisions, two blocks ahead of me. Hampered by tear-blinded eyes and a case of beer I would not be drinking I hustled as fast as I could down the garbage-strewn road paralleling the Libby Foods Factory, past brick walls splashed with obscene graffiti and gang insignia, concrete sidewalks littered with fast-food wrappers, cigarette butts and broken glass, with no hope of catching up.
He turned back once near a refinery yard, shooting a contemptuous disgusted glance in my direction. I am the ball attached to his chain. As I often do in times of stress and sorrow I sang to myself. “I Walk Alone,” from Green Day’s “Boulevard of Broken Dreams.” Suitable for the occasion of the latest humiliation.
“Hey baby, I wanna go where you’re going, where’s the partay?”
“Maybe she needs some help, do you need some help baby?”
I half-smile and nod stiffly, maintaining firm eye contact with the trash-talking group of black and white dudes hanging out on the next corner. They are likely harmless but my danger antenna is up. The worst thing you can do is appear submissive or scared. “No thanks guys, I got it,” I say pleasantly.
“Well, you have a nice day now, OK?” I nod again and keep moving, shoulders, elbows and wrists aching, startled by the only kindness I have known in quite some time. The beer boxes are sweating more than I am. The wet cardboard could give way any time now, spilling aluminum cans into the street. In my haste to catch up with Derek I didn’t stop to put them in my backpack.
Derek finally deigns, at great inconvenience to Himself, to stop and wait for me at the railroad tracks across from the marina street entrance. I flush with relief, sweat popping on my forehead, beading between my breasts, wet warmth running down my spine. “I’m sorry,” I say to his back. How pathetic, as pathetic as all the apologies needlessly made for years on end. Why am I sorry that I took so long to thoughtfully attempt to choose a beer that he would enjoy?
Scuttling along behind my husband like a proper subservient wife, I receive the first picture of what a life without vitriol and degradation would be. It would look like a weathered wooden shack hanging over a river in a warm place, a rocker tilted on warped floorboards on a rickety but serviceable porch, a flats boat tied to the railing, fishing poles and crab traps neatly stacked by the screen door. I hear the clack of a manual typewriter, smell brackish saltwater tang in the air. There is a woman here who lives alone but is not lonely. The river is the only road to her home. Her backyard is a dense jungle tangle of palmetto, rattling marsh grasses, lovingly nurtured native flowers. A small area has been cleared and fenced in. Melons, tomatoes and sunflowers flourish.
She spends her days writing, reading, thinking, gardening and fishing. Occasional lovers and constant friends come to her by boat.
In somnambulate half-sleep on the couch of a borrowed sailboat I again inhabit my river cabin, a brave pioneer tending her flowers, herbs and vegetables, feisty and fiercely independent as Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings at Cross Creek. It’s beautiful. No one yanks me from my reverie. No one is tapping a foot, snorting in annoyance, waiting for me to drop what I am doing and catch up with what’s supposedly more important.
Awake but dreaming I am called to the rivers, to a place I think I remember.
Seawind will not be able to enter the Chicago Sanitary Shipping Canal with her mast up. There are numerous bridges, 40 alone within a five-mile section, including a couple of 20-foot fixed bridges that the boat’s rigging is too tall to clear. There’s a reason that first section of the Illinois River is called “Fifteen Miles of Hell.” In addition to the low bridges there are numerous bascule bridges (drawbridges, to you landlubbers) that must be hailed by radio or with blasts on the horn so operators can open or raise them to allow boat traffic through. All the while the tow barges laden with hot blacktop, benzene, scrap metal and smoking wood chips clog the narrow waterway taking precedent over pleasure craft. Said pleasure craft can also be a danger, particularly because of local hooligans who like to toss back a few drinks and mess with the “fancy boats” and unseasoned Loopers who have no business piloting a vessel.
Grabbing the last banana I head up top for a look-see and breakfast. Another boat came in during the night and caught a mooring two balls over. The transom reads Blackout, home port New Orleans. The name does not engender confidence, but the boat itself is a different story, radiating the high gloss of both money and care.
Blackout is a fancy steel trawler with elegant swooping lines. She is decked out with all the accoutrements of a long-range cruising vessel: solar panels, wind generator, motorized lift for the Boston Whaler dinghy, a small electric scooter and all the other toys affluent liveaboards require to keep themselves in the style to which they are accustomed. From a distance I cannot tell whether the thin white noodle of a person sitting on the bow in cross-legged meditative pose smoking a cigarette is male or female.
“Helloooo over there — good morning!” the husky, nicotine-sanded voice offers no further clues to gender.
“Good morning,” I shout back. “It’s a beautiful day!”
“Want coffee?”
Before I can answer, the Whaler drops off its davits into the water, settling neatly into the roll of the constant Chicago Harbor chop. More boats have come out on the water to greet the possibilities of this crisp morning, but I still see no telltale orange Coast Guard dinghies or any other official-looking craft. The skinny person climbs nimbly down to the dinghy, fires up the outboard engine and zips over to Seawind.
Such behavior is not uncommon among boaters, a gregarious lot, at times so aggressively friendly that it will send an introvert running for cover. I cannot count how many times I’ve been subjected to endless male yapping about diesel engines, intake valves, stuffing boxes, seacocks, the merits of inflatable vs. hard dinghies and so on and so on. For as spiteful and impatient as Derek could be with me, he sure liked to gab for hours with anyone who stopped by in quest of solving a boat problem or touting the merits of their boat. Repelling hospitable advances is a definite no-no that will only attract further attention.
Under a blue ball cap intoning the legend “Relax: Cabbage Key,” a slightly lunatic elfin face looks up at me, sparkling blue eyes full of fun under sloppy, graying blonde bangs, apple cheeks plumped by an infectious grin, perfect pearly whites. “Permission to come aboard?” It is a husky-voiced she, and she is already halfway up the swim ladder at the stern before I nod.
I can tell right away that this wiry little dynamo doesn’t care about fuel pumps, electrical system wiring or holding tank capacity. In her face I see wealth, eccentricity and an ongoing, unstoppable search for happiness. She likes fishing, as evidenced by her Guy Harvey T-shirt hanging loosely over overpriced men’s khaki shorts purchased in the apparel department of some West Marine store. Rather than a Hawaiian shirt, she has topped her fashion ensemble with the second alternative in the cliché boater’s cruising uniform category, a long-sleeved denim shirt with the name of her boat embroidered on the right hand pocket. The coffee, handed over in an extra-large silver travel mug that also bears the Blackout moniker, is very welcome, a shot of normalcy and comfort with an upscale flair. “Thank you so much. I just got up. Haven’t gotten around to making coffee yet. I’m Hailey.”
“Hi Hailey, I’m Robin.”
“So where are you headed? You’re a long way from New Orleans.”
“Do you mind if I smoke?” She’s already pulling a pack of Marlboro Lights out of her denim shirt pocket. “Want one?”
“Sure. Why not, I’m trying to quit but you know how that goes. I’m good for a while, then I’m bad.”
“Shit sistah, I’m bad allll the time.”
Can’t help it, I’m laughing. She’s endearingly childlike although she must be close to my age, 40s headed for 50 any year now. Threads of tiny broken capillaries around her nose indicate that she’s never turned down a cocktail. It’s a lively face that has seen a lot of life, open and assertive.
We puff away companionably. Sometimes a cigarette tastes so good.
“Where are you headed? You don’t sound like you’re from New Orleans.” If I keep asking the questions, maybe I won’t have to supply any answers.
“I have no frickin’ idea. South, outta this cold. Katrina laid a number on the marina, just completely and totally creamed it. I ran up the rivers ahead of the storm and now that I’m all the way up here I’m ready to go back down to where the butter melts. Lake Michigan is as pretty as I remembered, but I forgot how cold it is up here.”
Turns out she’s originally from Detroit. She tells me she left her husband, “a real bunghole, to use a nautical phrase,” two years prior, just after they’d bought the boat and moved aboard down in the Big Easy. Like Derek and I, they did the Loop. That was enough of the liveaboard life for him. She wanted to keep going.
“I don’t need his money and the big-ass house and all the blahdey-blah, La Dee Dah bullcrap that goes with it, so I said screw it. It’s the cruising life for me from here on out. He kept the sailboat; I got stuck with the trawler. She’s a modified steel work boat. A one-off. No biggie, at heart I’m a stinkpotter not a rag-bagger anyway. What’s your deal, why are you single-handing? I am because no one in my family approves of my ‘bullheaded and ill-advised meandering’ — that’s a direct quote from my sister Renee. Nice boat you got here, by the way.” She pats the teak cap rail like she’s giving a good dog an atta boy.
“Thanks, but it’s not mine. I’m sort of watching it for a friend.”
“You’re from around here. Cool. We can dinghy into town and you can show me the lay of the land.”
“No, actually. I’m a Michigander too. From the U.P.”
“A Yooper, eh?”
“Sort of. I moved up there to go to school. My husband was — is — a dyed-in-the-wool Yooper, though.”
“So where is he?”
“Um…” She’s staring at me as I avert my eyes.
“What? Spit it out. Oh my God, is he dead? I’m sorry. I’m so nosy. Renee says I need a mouth monitor.”
“No no no, he’s not dead.”
The cockpit radio speakers crackle. “Securité! Securité! Securité! this is U.S. Coast Guard Chicago, break … Mariners are advised to keep a sharp lookout for a 36-foot sailing vessel Seawind, reported missing from its assigned berth at Hammond Marina as of 9/15, 1800 hours Greenwich Mean Time. Mariners are advised to keep a sharp lookout and report all sightings to the U.S. Coast Guard, break …”
“Hole E Shit.” Robin laughs, a raspy guffaw. “That’s you Miss Priss, isn’t it? And you look so innocent!”
“Well, I just borrowed her, honestly. I’m giving her back. I was only trying to get away. I’m such a loser that I only made it this far. I was actually trying to figure out how to get this mast down so I can get down the rivers somewhere where he can’t find me. Derek is going to kill me when he finds me. I am so screwed. He’ll probably put me away.”
The compulsion to blurt out the entire story in its sordid entirety, with rambling sidebars, is strong. As my mother says, I have the tendency to “spill my guts at the drop of a hat.” My entire family, with the exception of a tight-lipped father, is so confessional it’s a miracle we aren’t Catholics.
In my agitation and self-disgust I carelessly toss the cigarette butt overboard.
“Great, add water polluter to my many crimes.”
Robin bounces over to my side of the cockpit, lays her long, knotty fingers on my shoulders, and squeezes reflexively. I flinch, reminded of a first-grade teacher who shook me until my bones rattled because my loopy left-handed cursive was too large to contain a full sentence on the prescribed one line.
Robin does not shake me; she is firm, insistent, but gentle. “Get a grip, girlfriend. Time to abandon your stolen vessel, yaarr matey and chop chop!” She climbs down below and zips my duffel.
She can’t be serious. She doesn’t even know me. The both of us are clearly deranged. Menopause and perhaps something more.
“Robin. No. This is my problem,” I insist. “I don’t want to drag you into it.”
She stares up the companionway shooting me the kind of no-bull look I haven’t seen since my mother told me it was fine with her if I left Derek and moved back home.
“Hey, I’m in it, whether you like it or not,” she says, climbing back into the cockpit. “No worries. I specialize in strays dogs and lost causes!”
I bid farewell to Seawind with a whispered blessing and gratitude as we zoom to Blackout at top speed. I have left no trace save for an open chart, a drip-dried saucepan in the drainer, two banana peels and a 6-ply wad of toilet paper. We’re doused with spray as the dinghy plows through the medium chop. Seagulls wheel in the cloud-ribboned sky, laughing at my folly.
Robin lifts her face to the promising morning sun, lets out a disco battle cry, “Ooooh ooooh — rivers, here we come!”
Again, I’m being rescued. Along with the relief of having a problem easily and immediately solved for me, there is a sick familiarity to turning over control. If pattern holds true to form, somewhere along the line resentment will set in on both sides of this bizarre equation, the result being dangerous to one or more said parties.
Abuse does not hinder self-awareness, it amplifies. Already I can feel a chronic eagerness to serve kicking in. To be so useful, handy, unobtrusive and pleasant to have around that she will find me indispensable. Already I am wondering — much as I hate to foster my penurious streak — how much money she has and how she earns a living. As one who has never had enough to make it on my own, subsisting from paycheck to paycheck even in the best of times, I hope she will be able to supplement my $1,572. Of course I am not going to mention it. For now. After all, she could easily rob me and dump me off on the side of the river or leave me stranded on a sidewalk in Joliet, Illinois. Will a reward be offered for turning me in to the proper authorities? Will they swab the peels and toilet paper for DNA?
Mom would have known better. She’s a fan of TV crime procedurals. She’d wipe everything down and take the trash along.
Why do I always imagine the worst? When I try to look forward, it’s only ever in anticipation of the next shit that will hit the fan.
“Quit freaking out.” Robin has to holler to be heard over the vroom of the outboard engine. She doesn’t strike me as the whispering type in any event.
“Sorry.”
“I can see it all over your face. And don’t apologize. Quit it right now. Jesus, are you ever tightly wound.”
“Well, wouldn’t you be? I have no idea what I’m doing. We barely know each other.”
“Here we are,” Robin eases the Whaler up to the stern ladder. “Welcome to your home away from home. Climb up first and open the porch gate. I’ll hand up your stuff.”
All is aboard in short order. Robin surprises me with her crisp professionalism. And her natural assumption that I’ll man the bow. She issues the prepare-to-cast-off order after I gather in the mooring ball pendant. I untie the bowline harness while she fires up the engines, which I later learn are twin Lehman diesels.
Blackout retains a certain dignity and aloof beauty, as if she is above the mud, barnacles, bilge slime and normal grime that inevitably puts its mark on any vessel that’s been out cruising for an extended period of time. Her hull is glossy obsidian, her white stay-gripped decks pristine. There’s a good explanation for this. The last in a long line of boatyard owners specializing in marine sales & service, Robin ran the detailing end of the family empire. She is an expert on maintaining, restoring, cleaning and polishing woodwork, fiberglass, brass, stainless and virtually every other surface and materials found on boats. She is also a neat freak, which means no nook or cranny on her 44-foot floating home escapes her ministrations. Blackout is a pristine custom craft, its solid black, slightly luminescent hard-chined hull embellished with a discreet cranberry cove pin-stripe above and a slightly thicker cranberry boot stripe at the waterline. Her square lines, from the high, rectangular transom (the back end to you landlubbers) to her waist-high bulwarks (the top edge of her sides on either deck) broadcast ‘don’t mess with me.’ Everything is either solid steel or steel-clad. The conventional, four-windowed white pilothouse and its door are steel-plated, as is the lower “doghouse” on the foredeck, the roof, if you will, of the living and navigational quarters. Blackout’s heavy, blunt, almost militaristic persona is balanced by the sweeping, subtle arch of her pointed bow, emphasized by geometric cranberry-and-white scrollwork. The bikes and dinghies stowed on the flat-top cabin roof also hint at less-than-official business.
Blackout’s tastefully spare interior is the antithesis of the stereotypical cruising vessel littered ad nauseum with nautical novelties and bric-a-brac. Nary a dolphin, mermaid, lighthouse, pelican or coconut pirate head in sight. There is no litter of tools or past lives. The only ornamentation works for a living: barometer, clock, compass, burnished brass oil lanterns and a diminutive, shiny red Franklin stove. Solid black, red and white dominate the color scheme. It’s simple, sophisticated, warm. Robin directs me to stow my duffle in the V-berth, which currently seems to be doing duty as a combined toolbox and well-organized storage area for cleaning and paper supplies, including a crate of Bounty paper towels, Swiffer Wet Jet refills and several family-size packages of Charmin Extra Strong toilet tissue. There’s no time to wonder about sleeping arrangements, although I allow myself a fleeting thought about sexual orientation before heading up top to the pilot house. We have handily cleared the mooring field and are approaching the ship canal entrance.
Despite the incessant traffic and the need to be on alert for close encounters with tugs, tows and other recreational vessels (RVs, as some of the tow pilots call those of our ilk), the journey through Chicago is, as ever, scenic and imposing. The skyline when viewed from the deck of a small boat is other-worldly. Skyscrapers dwarf Blackout as we motor through the concrete canyon, wrapped in the din and energy of the Windy City.
We travel in silence, captivated by man-made sounds and scenery, until the canal dumps us into the river proper, the lovely but toxic Illinois. This river is so laden with chemicals that ice will not form on it in winter. Even now a mentholated vaporous mist steams off the water, wisping in the wind as the sun hits the surface. Signs all along the banks warn against touching the water. Even the many herons at the river’s edge seem to know better than to wade, perching instead on the tree limbs, rocks and industrial detritus — rotting wooden piers, rusty metal skeletons-that protrude from the shoreline overlooking the cola-colored river. I continually scan the river, the banks. The binoculars are never out of my hands.
Soon the locks begin. In the first 100 miles from Lake Michigan the river drops 140 feet. From Starved Rock Lock to the Mississippi the drop is another 20 feet.
The first lock, the O’Brien, basically serves to keep river water and invasive species including zebra mussels and Asian Carp out of Lake Michigan. In later years, underwater electrical barriers were installed, providing another good reason to keep out of the water.
The green signal light is on, indicating permission to enter the lock chamber. Once we are inside, with just a couple of other smallish boats — neither one Chinook, just a ratty-looking 23-foot cabin cruiser and metallic red racing runabout — the gates on either end of the lock close. The drop is slight, maybe a foot, imperceptible to the naked eye but it’s a buffer zone. Robin positions the boat as instructed by an attendant, who curtly nods to our “good morning” and silently points to the spot on the smooth concrete wall where he wants us. “Use your words,” Robin whispers under her breath as he moves on. “Shhh,” I caution, but we’re both snickering.
No need for work gloves to handle long lines. A boathook on the walkway railing is enough to hold Blackout in place just off the wall. For me this is a familiar duty handled automatically with no need for discussion. It’s as if Robin and I have been traveling together for months rather than hours. When the horns sound and the gate opens, Robin lets out another disco whoop, “Oooh oooh.” And I join in.
Buh Bye Derek. There’s a solid obstacle between you and me. You can get through faster than an invasive Asian Carp. But it will slow you down.
We glide out barely above idle, giving the two smaller craft plenty of leeway to zoom ahead.
“Look at their fishing poles,” says Robin.
“They don’t actually eat what they catch, do they?” I wonder.
“I wouldn’t,” she says. “how far did you want to go today? I was thinking Joliet.”
“There’s a free town dock there in the Veteran’s Park,” I offer, trying to be of use. “The casino across the river has a sumptuous around-the-world buffet rivaling the Hammond casino. There’s also a Wendy’s fast-food outlet on the park side of the river and a party store cum gas station within walking distance,” I babble. These are all important considerations for your normal Great Loop cruisers, but a boat hijacker on the run should be thinking of something other than shopping and dining. I remind myself that I must lay low, fly under the radar and operate undercover, as my mixed-metaphor flinging family would advise.
“Joliet it is,” Robin says with a nod.
Robin doesn’t strike me as the incognito type. Even on short acquaintance I don’t believe she will turn me in, but she won’t be hiding her light under any bushels any time soon, either. It is hard to tell if she knows how to keep quiet about a situation and if she can keep secrets other than her own. Our own secrets seem to be the easiest to keep, even though holding them in does more damage.
“But…”
“What?”
“The last time Derek and I stopped in Joliet for the night there were regular police patrols in the park. A detective even stopped by the boat to see if we needed anything. He came back later with two courtesy blocks of ice, after Derek explained to their mutual great interest how our refrigeration system had shat the bed.”
I worry that that detective is still around. I’ll definitely need to watch my back and keep an eye out to avoid being recognized.
“Does he beat you?”
“OK, here’s the deal. I don’t know when, where or even if Derek is looking for me. He won’t think I have the guts to get down the rivers on my own and even if I did, why would I? I’ve got nowhere to go.” I can’t look at her. It’s embarrassing. I follow the foamy line of bow wake breaking the dark, dense, untouchable water. “As far as he’s concerned, I’m a helpless dummy. The first place he probably looked was around the boat. Figured I fell off. For all I know he’s demanding they drag the harbor bottom in Hammond right now.
“He could be looking for me in Chicago. Or over in Michigan. Or farther downriver. Or not at all. I don’t want to get you in trouble. So if you just want to drop me off somewhere it’s cool. Thanks for everything — you’ve already done a lot — but I don’t expect you to keep covering my keister or get yourself in a pickle.”
“Does he beat you?” Robin narrows her eyes, ready to do battle. How gratifying.
“No, not physically — unless you count this passive-aggressive thing he does with his body, invading all the space. Also pony-tail pulling. He just, I don’t know, swallows me up, like there’s no room to have a thought or action of my own. He eclipses me. He Gaslights me. You know, the old movie where the husband tries to make the wife think she’s crazy? Everything that I think is important he thinks is wrong and stupid. Everything has to be his way. Everything I do is ridiculous. He’s so impatient with everyone but himself. It’s hard to explain — but I just couldn’t take it one more day.”
“Well, if anybody official or otherwise bugs us at the docks, we’ll just keep going,” Robin says, extracting a cig from the pack in her shirt pocket. “We aren’t going to run into any cops out here. Let’s not worry about them right now.”
“And,” she adds, “crowding you out and pulling your hair is physical abuse and mental abuse is real and every bit as damaging. I saw it on Oprah.”
She’s right — about the police, anyway. You rarely, if ever, see the Coast Guard on the rivers. This is the lexicon of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which is chiefly consumed with the business of dredging, clearing and shoring up the waterway, along with controlling commercial traffic and operating the locks and accompanying dams. If you are sick of seeing cops, and Lord knows I am, the river is a good place to be.
“Heads-up,” Robin barks. A double-wide barge of stinking asphalt is hurtling towards us on the right. Behind us, to the left, a single-wide barge of hot-top is preparing to run up our port side. Blackout is the meat in a tow-barge sandwich. There is no choice but to continue on our path up the middle. But the motley cabin cruiser that was with us in the locks has stalled. Its engine dead, it’s turned sideways to the current with no room to maneuver. The tow wash is pushing it backward, directly into Blackout’s bow, as its captain tries to engage the engine.
The impact is a solid thunk that can be heard over the AC/DC blaring on the cabin cruiser’s stereo and the cursing of its young-dude crew. The hapless mariners scramble to put down their Bacardi bottles and longneck beers to fend off. The much-lighter fiberglass cabin cruiser won’t hurt Blackout’s thick steel hull. Thankfully the tows have passed. But the collision pushes Blackout into a parked barge tied at a nearby pier, taking a chunk out of her stern transom paint and bashing in a corner of the rub rail.
I grab a boathook and rush up front, poking at whatever the tip of the hook can reach to shove the errant boat out of our way. “Watch where the hell you’re going,” I holler at the dudes in their flowered surfer shorts and mirrored sunglasses.
“Take it easy, lady, this happens all the time,” a dreadlocked 20-something says, laughing.
“Not to me it doesn’t,” I scream back, although we are so close that my irate spittle may have hit his liquored-up baby face. Say it don’t spray it doesn’t apply in these situations. “If you can’t control your boat you should stay off the water.”
Blessedly the river is still clear of oncoming commercial traffic and we are able to ease back out with no further encounters. The cabin cruiser finally fires up and speeds off ahead of us.
There are those, mostly non-boaters, who think of the Loop as a relaxing ramble down lazy rivers to tropical climates; I wonder what they would make of this dark version of National Lampoon’s Family Vacation.
“Remind me to never piss you off,” says Robin. Grab me a beer, would you please? That deserves a drink.”
After her first sip, she comments, “If Derek thinks you can’t handle a boat, his head’s up his ass.”